Chris Duel tackles all sides of news and sports from a fiercely independent perspective. A local radio fixture since 1997, his show on WOAI became the city's highest-rated radio talk show and set modern day ratings records for News-Talk format in San Antonio.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Iran Protests Evoke Tiananmen Square Déjà Vu

As I watch images of the Iranian protests on television and the Internet, I am struck by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

We’ve seen this movie before. And it has a pretty violent and bloody ending.

It was another June, twenty summers ago, when the first made-for-TV uprising took place in Tiananmen Square. In 1989, young Chinese protesters took to the streets and converged upon the world’s largest open urban square in Beijing. Mostly college students and intellectuals, a crowd as large as a million people peacefully camped in Tiananmen Square for seven weeks to protest China’s oppressive communist regime.

There was a sense that the Tiananmen Square protest had a chance of bringing change due to the vast expansion of cable television and satellites which could instantaneously beam news images around the globe.

The world was watching.

Certainly, many thought, the Chinese regime would not risk global scorn and outrage by turning guns upon its own citizens.

Then, swiftly and brutally, in the predawn hours of June 4, 1989, Chinese soldiers stormed upon the protesters, killing an estimated 2,500 and injuring as many as 10,000 according to the Red Cross.

It was a massacre. And a generation’s hope for freedom and liberty in China was destroyed.

I can only hope and pray that 20 years later the brave citizens of Iran who are standing up to their oppressive theocracy will somehow reach the tipping point that China’s Tiananmen Square protesters never achieved.

Chris Duel

One Response

Good article. It is a shame that the most powerful nation on earth doesn’t have leadership that matches the bravery one sole demonstrator in Iran. Our leadership is too busy bowing to the leadership of Saudi Arabia and apologizing to Muslims for being so horrible. We should show and provide support to them.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.